Following a successful six-year period as Board Member, Chief Operations Officer International, and Chief Marketing Officer at SLAC Group, Chris McKenzie is resigning his positions from the company, effective from February 2023.

During this period, McKenzie was instrumental in expanding SLAC’s reputation from a Chinese-centric company, into a global can making supplier with one of the leading portfolios within the industry.

McKenzie has played a leading role at SLAC in the company’s acquisition strategy of servicing customers internationally and broadening SLAC’s product range. This has included the acquisition of Intercan Group in the UK, and OKL in the US. McKenzie has also been instrumental in the company’s foray into the digital printing sphere, and SLAC’s growth plan, with recent capacity expansion in both Suzhou, China, and Dayton, Ohio in the US to service the explosive growth seen during the past few years.

As well as the growth in the canmaking business, McKenzie has been working on the company’s next phase of growth, which has involved diversification into the electric vehicle and storage battery market in the US and EU.

“Commenting on his tenure, McKenzie was keen to express his gratitude to colleagues and reflect on the past six years. He said: “It’s been a perfect storm for the growth in the canmaking industry these past few years, and this has been reflected in this period being one of the most vibrant and exciting of my career.

“It’s been a pleasure working with such dedicated and passionate people at SLAC, and we can look back fondly at our achievements, which include several innovative product launches such as the The Boxer Bodymaker and Hexad.”

Although resigning from his positions, McKenzie is continuing to explore other opportunities in the metal packaging industry, where he has had over 30 years of experience, including senior technical and managerial roles at several key industry players.

McKenzie has had a hands-on approach to the industry, where he was European Technical Manager for Preferred Tooling, a specialist tooling company that represented many of the top Japanese tooling manufacturers. From this he gravitated to manage the supply of tooling to European Can Makers, then onto D.A. Stuart Ironsides who asked him to join them in a European role and eventually set up Asia Pacific offices based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

During his time in Asia, he worked for Henkel Surface Technologies as Technical Director for Asia Pacific. At the end of his contract, he moved to Australia with his family where he

expanded his roles to support in senior roles Houghton Globally working in Central and South America, Europe and Russia. Following this, McKenzie undertook senior sales roles with CarnaudMetalbox Engineering and Stolle Machinery, where he honed his skills in managing global services teams and negotiating global capital equipment contracts.

McKenzie continues to live with his family in Australia where they have lived for the past two decades.